Thirteenth World Conference

The Lives to Come

Mario Tokoro

Dr. Mario Tokoro is Co-Founder, Chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. The laboratories are small yet extremely competitive and unique, where researchers given full creative freedom conduct highly original research. He has been serving as Research Supervisor for the Japan Science and Technology Agency project of Dependable Embedded OS for Practical USE (DEOS).
Dr. Tokoro has been advocating a new scientific methodology called Open Systems Science to solve problems of complex, ever-changing systems such as earth sustainability, life and health, and man-made huge information infrastructures (Open Systems Science – from Understanding Principles to Solving Problems, IOS Press, 2010).
He was Professor of Computer Science at Keio University and contributed to innovations in Internet, Object-Oriented Concurrent Computing, and Distributed Systems. He established Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. in 1988 and led it to be a world-renowned fundamental research institute. He joined Sony Corporation in 1987 to become Corporate Senior Vice President, and then assumed the role of CTO in 2000. He promoted architecture-based design and common software platform for consumer electronics products. For this, he established Consumer Electronics Linux Forum CELF in short, which was recently absorbed in Linux Foundation to form the CELF workgroup.
He was Visiting Assistant Professor at University of Waterloo and Carnegie-Mellon University, Visiting Researcher at GMD, and Visiting Professor at Université Paris VI. He served as a member of British Telecom Group CTO External Advisory Board (2003-2006), NTT DoCoMo Technology Advisor Board (2003-2004), and various Governmental Committees. He has been an Associate Member of Science Council of Japan since 2006. He was awarded Officier de l’Ordre National du Mérit from the Republic of France in 2005 and Docteur Honoris Causa from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (former Université Paris VI) in 2010.

Achieving Continuous Operation of Huge, Complex and Ever-Changing Systems in the Nanotechnology Era

In the nanotechnology era, every system becomes smart, compact, and small, whereas huge in functionality, complex in structure, and ever-changing to meet the requirements of users. These systems are often connected to each other to form much more complex ones and the boundary of a system becomes vague. Our daily lives are supported by such systems, from telecommunication to traffic and distribution, from manufacturing to financing, and from healthcare to defense. The prevention of a failure, and isolating a failure from propagation when it occurs, becomes crucial to achieve continuous operation of such systems.
Open Systems Dependability is a methodology of achieving continuous operation of huge, complex, and ever-changing systems. It sees such a system as an open system (as these words are used in scientific language), in which failures cannot be completely prevented and therefore, minimizing the damage, identifying the causes, and achieving accountability have the highest priority. The DEOS process is defined, which integrates the continuous development process (for ever-changing nature) and operation process (that overlap with the continuous development process). It is not only applicable to ICT systems but also to a wider range of systems including mechanical and cyber-physical ones.